2015 Ditmar Award Recipients Named

The winners of the 2015 Ditmar Awards, recognizing annually the achievement in Australian science fiction, fantasy, horror and fandom, as well as several other awards were announced on April 5 during an awards ceremony at  the 2015 Australian National SF Convention, Swancon 40, in Perth.

Best Novel (tie)

  • “The Lascar’s Dagger” by Glenda Larke (Hachette)
  •  “Thief’s Magic” (Millennium’s Rule 1) by Trudi Canavan (Hachette Australia)

Best Novella or Novelette

  •  “The Legend Trap” by Sean Williams, in Kaleidoscope (Twelfth Planet Press)

Best Short Story

  •  “The Seventh Relic” by Cat Sparks, in Phantazein (FableCroft Publishing)

Best Collected Work

  • “Kaleidoscope” edited by Alisa Krasnostein and Julia Rios (Twelfth Planet Press)

Best Artwork

  • Illustrations, Kathleen Jennings, in Black-Winged Angels (Ticonderoga Publications)

Best Fan Writer

  • Tansy Rayner Roberts, for body of work

Best Fan Artist

  • Kathleen Jennings, for body of work, including Fakecon art and Illustration Friday series

Best Fan Publication in Any Medium

  •  “The Writer and the Critic” – Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond

Best New Talent

  • Helen Stubbs

William Atheling Jr Award for Criticism or Review

  • “Does Sex Make Science Fiction Soft?” in Uncanny Magazine 1, Tansy Rayner Roberts

Other awards announced during the ceremony included:

The Peter McNamara Achievement Award

  • Merv Binns

The Norma K. Hemming Award

  • Paddy O’Reilly for The Wonders (Affirm Press, November 2014).

Honourable mention: Angela Slatter & Lisa L Hannett for The Female Factory.

The Norma K. Hemming Award is given for excellence in the exploration of race, gender, sexuality, class and disability in Australian speculative fiction

The A. Bertram Chandler Award

  • Donna Maree Hanson

The A. Bertram Chandler Award for Outstanding Achievement in Australian Science Fiction is a jury award for outstanding achievement over a goodly number of years. It was established by the Australian Science Fiction Foundation in 1992 in recognition of the contribution that best-selling author Bert Chandler made to Australian Science Fiction in the decades spanning WWII to the mid-1980s.

2014 A. Bertram Chandler Award

Bruce Gillespie asks me to add to the Australian SF awards given out at Continuum X, in Melbourne, last weekend the award given by the Australian SF Foundation, of which he is President:

A. Bertram Chandler Award for Lifetime Service to Australian SF

  • Danny Danger Oz

And Gillespie sent along some background information about the winner:

Danny will not be known much outside of Australia, because his major achievements have been in club and convention organising, both in Western Australia and Victoria, particularly his work for the Melbourne SF Club over the last 30 years, and his establishment of Continuum to be the annual convention in Melbourne.